


See No Evil, Hear No Evil

by hatstand



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Classic Doctor Who References, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Swearing, gratuitousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5689261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatstand/pseuds/hatstand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardison can't hear, Eliot can't see, which is what happens when a building falls on you in the middle of a con.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See No Evil, Hear No Evil

**Author's Note:**

> I basically just liked the idea of them both having one half of an argument while being nearly dead about finding better buddy movies to re-enact.

Hardison’s on the other side of the street and he’s watched Parker leap off of so many buildings by now he should be used to it, but this time it’s not Parker leaping.  It’s Eliot.

No ropes. No harness. Just the shell of an unfinished apartment block, and three storeys of thinking time.

Hardison is up and running and has just enough time to wonder in what parallel universe Eliot would ever choose to jump not fight, and to realise; not enough time to turn back.

Then the building explodes.

 

*

 

‘Report? Come on, guys, I hear sirens outside, give me something to work with.’

‘What Nate means is, please let us know you’re all right?’

Eliot can hear Sophie’s glare through the comms, and wishes she could hear his in return. He’s not much for talking right now. He’s not much for breathing either, which is alarming him way more than the pain, and the parts of him where there isn’t pain but there damn well should be, and the other thing, the other thing he’s not even thinking about.

He was two storeys off the ground when it blew. Twenty feet from fast-rushing-up asphalt, then a force like a truck at his back that flipped him ass over tit and left him – here. Wherever the hell here is.

‘I’m one block away,’ says Parker in his ear. ‘I’m almost there.’

Parker the hero, saying the thing she’s figured out he needs to hear.

Nothing scarier than that.

 

*

 

There is noise and it is LOUD.

Hardison could come up with a list of other things that are shitty about his present condition – like how everything smells like fire, and his mouth feels gummy, and a whole freaking construction site fell on him – but the noise is the worst of it. Like a fire alarm set itself up right inside his head.

He yells over it, hoping the comms can make out his voice on top of the crazy noise.

He yells for Nate and Sophie and Parker to come.

Nothing.

He’s tested this damn system with EMP and ultrasonic and even underwater, though that wasn’t exactly on purpose and Bathtub Sunday didn’t qualify as lab conditions, exactly. But still: the earbuds are like cockroaches. They can survive anything.

It takes another two full minutes of yelling before Hardison realises he can’t hear himself.

 

*

 

Eliot wishes Hardison would shut the fuck up.

He wishes Nate and Sophie and Parker would shut the fuck up too, but they keep on yelling ‘Hardison, we can hear you!’ across the comms like the exploding concrete wasn’t a clue. Perforated eardrums.  Hardison’s going to be hearing white noise for a week. They could be yelling to Mars.

They’ve been yelling to Eliot too, of course. He’s working on answering. Breathing first, then answering.

 

 

*

 

‘Oh, hell. Can you hear me? I can’t hear me. You could be telling me that you can hear me right now, but I wouldn’t know. Damn, I hope you can hear me. I’m... I don’t know, it’s dark, there’s all dust and broken concrete and ... I’m looking for Eliot but it’s dark, man. It’s like this whole place came down sideways on us, there’s floors that are walls and... Eliot, can you hear me? Please, man, if you’re yelling I’m not gonna hear it. Give me a sign? Wave a flag? Throw something? Nothing pointy, now.’

Hardison holds his sleeve across his mouth and nose and edges in the direction of... something. His own hand reaching in front of him is someone else’s, dusted white. He keeps jolting and jerking, scared of the ceiling. There won’t be a warning trickle of dust or a creaking of girders: not one he can hear. If the rest comes down he won’t even know about it.

He’s never felt so disconnected in his life.

 

*

 

_Raindrops keep falling on my head..._

It’s the dripping sound, that’s what’s making that play in his ears. Or _it’s the fall that’s gonna kill you_. Butch and Sundance. Hardison’s going to give him shit for casting himself as _Butch_ , he just knows it, but that’s Paul frickin’ Newman right there, and anyway who the hell complains about being Redford?

Eliot wants to laugh and that’s not good, not least because he’s cracked a bunch of ribs. Laughing means shock. Maybe concussion. He’s spacing out, losing time. Nate’s already on the scene, FEMA specialist to Parker’s FBI agent, sealing the area off. Sophie’s sweet-talking the dazed site foreman, still working the con. It jolts him, hearing it. It ain’t right.

‘Was us,’ he says, chalk in his mouth, trying to swallow. ‘Nate. It was us.’

His ear goes crazy. Hardison has no clue how lucky he is.

Nate’s voice blares loud: ‘Eliot, are you getting this?’ and he isn’t; he zoned out again.

‘Mitchell,’ he croaks out, eventually.

‘We know, Eliot,’ says Sophie, distraught, and he wishes he could fix his voice up, just for her. ‘Esther Mitchell got one step ahead of us: saw us talking to Joey and realised we were about to bring her whole scam crashing down.’

‘So she sets up a meet, tries to do it literally. Wipe out the evidence of the building code violations - and us at the same time.’

Nate sounds pissed. He should. There were families who’d already made a home in this unfinished block, sweet little Joey Casarella’s included. A co-op; people who couldn’t afford to buy so were building instead. A community. When Joey got sick and the project stalled, Mitchell Lettings offered to buy in and sponsor phase two of the building work - and slowly set about making it a slum; a rat infestation here, a suddenly faulty fire escape there. As soon as the inspectors condemned it as unfit for human habitation, Esther Mitchell could apply to convert the plot use to commercial instead of residential real estate, and make a mint selling it to a mall development company which was already buying everything in a square mile - a company in which she just happened to have a majority share.

Short version: they made it worse. They screwed up. Now there’s no residential block to even condemn. And there could be other people in this place, honest citizens who they were supposed to be helping, who just wanted to protect their homes and now –

Eliot shuts his eyes on it, though it makes no damn difference.

Then he hears something fall, and a yelp that is undeniably Alec Hardison.

 

*

 

‘Eliot! Eliot! Eliot! Hey guys, I got Eliot! I found Eliot! You hear? Hey, Eliot? ELIOT?’

Hardison has to pull off some scrambling – which is super-hard holding his phone out like a nightlight – to get up to what used to be the second floor, though it’s all looking a little Titanic right now.

Then some almighty poker face.

Eliot looks dead. Even after his eyes open up and start looking back at him. There’s no glare, not even focus, till Hardison tries to reach across and accidentally nudges Eliot’s elbow with his knee. That brings him out sharp.

‘Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry, I’m sorry, man, I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ he says, still freaked by being able to speak without hearing himself.

Eliot’s lips move but he can’t follow it.

‘I. can’t. hear. you,’ Hardison says, spelling it out slow like Eliot is the one trying to lipread.

He waits for the flared nostrils, the pitying stare, the curled lip that says Situation Normal: Eliot Mad At Hardison. But Eliot stays rigidly still, swallowing like it hurts to, breathing like its work. Then his lips move again, slow, deliberate.

Hardison sounds out the words along with him, and is kind of glad he can’t hear them.

‘I. can’t. see. you.’

 

*

 

Great. Fucking fantastic. He’s blind and dying and the last thing he’s going to hear is Hardison bitching about some Richard Pryor movie.

‘Seriously? Nah, come on, man, you’re hurting me here. I mean, I was fine when we were doing the classics: I am down with some Sidney Poitier action. But this, man? This is hokey. This is insulting. To both of us. And you have no idea what I’m talking about. OK. I’m focusing, I am focusing.’

Eliot hears the dust in Hardison’s pipes; doesn’t need to see his face to read the panic. Doesn’t need Hardison’s big hands swatting at his face either, feeling for the head injury, making him tense up however hard he fights it. Hardison needs to clear out. These walls are going to come down; no warning. He tells him so, a couple of times, but the voices in his ear get fast and buzzy, and Hardison can’t hear him anyway.

‘Eliot!’ It’s Parker, crazy-loud and perky. ‘So, um, Nate is off comms while he steals us a fire truck and a bomb disposal unit and 4 blocks. But he said I should keep you talking, so, hey! How’s it going? Wait, don’t answer that. Light stuff, light stuff. Uh, Sophie?’

‘I mean, I got nothing against the screwball genre,’ Hardison says over top of her, his breath on the side of Eliot’s face as he peels wet sticky hair off his forehead. ‘But – even speaking as a child of the 80s here - leave that shit to Cary Grant, you know what I’m saying?’

‘Is he talking about movies?’ It’s Parker again, so loud it’s like she’s taken the earbud out and is yelling into it. Which is possible. ‘Oh, that’s good! Movies are light stuff. Go Hardison!’

‘We are not even talking about _Superman III_. Not even. And, come on, Gene Wilder? That dude was disturbing way before Johnny Depp went all Jackson on Willy Wonka’s ass.’

‘I can’t talk about movies,’ hisses Parker. ‘I never saw a whole one. Though seriously, a darkened room full of distracted people in flip-down seats where you can reach their pockets from the row behind them? Bo-ring.’

Eliot sucks in sharp as Hardison’s palm presses on his chest. Something clicks. Hurts like a blade (Bogota, that’s what it feels like: conquistador gold heavy in his pocket, machine guns ripping up the dirt as he runs and runs and bam, smack into an unexpected bayonet and a fist to the throat) and then Hardison’s yelling apologies, and Parker’s yelling, ‘movies, movies! stay with movies!’, and he guesses his face is showing what his lungs won’t fetch him breath to holler out.

Slow. Slow. Little breaths. Settle down.

He lets the talk wash over him, and then there’s quiet in his ear, only Hardison droning something about remakes like somehow he heard Parker’s advice.

And then Sophie.

‘Eliot? I hope you can hear me. Hang in there, all right? We’re working on getting to you.’  It’s her grift voice: always two semi-tones higher, whatever the accent.

‘But?’ he rasps.

Sophie hesitates; long enough for him to know she’s doing it on purpose, giving him time.

‘But you need to stay still. Mitchell laid a second device. It hasn’t gone off yet. You’re sitting on a bomb.’

 

*

 

Hardison’s thigh gets grabbed, and he’s a little not OK with that, not without dinner and a movie and some fluttery eyelashes. He’s all the way through saying so when Eliot tilts his head, and yells.

He still can’t hear a word over the crashing in his ears. And the glare is a lot less fearsome now he knows there’s no sight behind it. But Eliot is mouthing a word that Hardison doesn’t like the whole look of.

‘Bomb?’ He scoots back an inch. ‘There’s a bomb? Where’s the bomb?’

Hardison’s eyes go back to tracking across the skewed mess of girders and rubble above them, as if there is going to be a huge flashing bomb with BOMB printed across it. He holds up his phone as a flashlight again, just to make absolutely sure.  Then he waves it – kind of wild, he’s got to admit, and his hand is clammy and shaky and basically totally not dealing – across the vague path he stumbled up to get here. Nothing but dust and creepifying darkness.

He needs to get a grip. Yosemite Sam is not the bad guy.

‘You know,’ he says conversationally, hoping his voice sounds sort of normal and not all helium-fuelled like he thinks it might, ‘Statistically speaking, bombs on a timer generally have a 25% chance of failing to detonate. So, you know, we could get lucky ...’

Who knew blind people could look sarcastic?

Not that Eliot is blind, any more than Hardison is deaf. This is all totally temporary, and not at all likely to end with them exploding. Nope. Nuh-uh.

Hardison lowers the phone. No signal in here anyway. Best to conserve power. Though if he had his full rig, he could start tracking any remaining devices down here: scan for anomalous power sources, tap into the frequency used to trigger the first device and jam it, hell, block every signal for -

Eliot grips his thigh again, and Hardison yells out ‘Hey?’ because it’s a little grabby and personal space is kind of at a premium right now.  But Eliot’s talking, lips moving slowly, forming each word for him, reluctant and precise and painful.

Hardison can’t recall when he last gave a guy’s lips this much close attention.

‘Keep talking,’ they mouth out. ‘Don’t stop talking.’

 

*

 

‘That’s it, Eliot, you keep him calm, keep him focused on you,’ says Sophie’s voice, and it burns, how kind she can be, because they both know she didn’t get him to ask for Hardison’s benefit.

He’s going to miss that. He’s going to miss her pissing him off with that NLP crap, too. The glee in her voice as she adds something wholly outlandish to her cover, on the fly, just to keep herself entertained. The smell of her perfume. The questions she asks, and the fact that she asks them.

Parker, limbs folded like origami on the couch beside him, crunching on cereal like she’s in a freaking commercial. Her happy face, when she finds out she might get to steal something. Her blissed face, when she’s falling, when she’s pressing hundred dollar bills to her cheek like a blanket. Her face.

Nate fucking Ford, trying to act the daddy and proving how shitty a job his own did every day. Conversation they’ll never have. Never would have had, neither, but still, it feels like loss, somehow.

Course, he could say any damn thing he liked to Hardison right now. Any words he wanted.

Not like he’ll hear ‘em.

‘So after Susan leaves, the Doctor picks up this identikit super-futuristic chick in a miniskirt called Vicki, like a replacement – which is cute, don’t you think? And then Ian and Barbara leave, _totally_ to get it on, and they pick up Steven, who is, like, a space pilot from the future. With a panda. It’s a thing. Vicki marries some Trojan dude, and... hey! Then there’s Katarina, and that right there is the first of our famous companion controversies. Are you following so far? Cause there will be a pop quiz, and if you pass I will financially blacklist the asshole of your choice. Eliot?’

Hardison’s deaf, so Eliot has no idea why he’s asking, but he licks his dry lips and answers anyway.

‘ _Dammit_ , Hardison.’

‘You bitching at me? Huh? Oh, no, my mistake: what you said was ‘please, Hardison, tell me more of the history of the long-running British classic time travel show _Doctor Who_ ’, right? Sorry, man, this lipreading thing is new to me. Anyways, then there’s Sara Kingdom, who – funny story – was married to...’

He’s got grit in his nose, dust in his throat, blood trickling warm from one ear, and a bomb counting down. He’s not going to miss Hardison. They’re going down together.

Comfort’s not the word, not by a long stretch. But he listens anyway. That half-naked Leela chick sounds hot.

 

*

 

They need more time.

See, the thing that Hardison likes most is that they might come and go, the Doctor Who companions - and he’s totally in the Loves Them All camp: left Outpost Gallifrey back when it still _was_ Outpost Gallifrey after his post about how Mel was actually a badass hacker got fugly – but he’s got his favourites, no shit. Sure, they could use some color before 2007. But some teams just click. Two and Jamie and Polly and Ben. Four and Harry and Sarah. Crowded TARDIS, that’s when it works best. Nate’s not the Doctor – so, so, very not the Doctor – but they’ve got that perfect team thing down. They’ve got the click thing. He liked Tara, but she was Jamie with his face all wrong in _The Mind Robber_ , and getting the real thing back made him ache with how puzzle-perfect it all fit.

One day he’s going to have his own crew, and that’s what it’s going to be like. Only without the time traveling. Probably.

But he has to live through this first.

And to make Eliot watch a lot of old black and white TV, once his sight’s back.

And then it’s all going to be ok, and they’ll go grift some Quarks or whatever.

If he could hear them, Nate or Sophie or Parker could be telling him right this second that it’s all over. That they’re safe. That they froze out Mitchell’s electronic trigger by disconnecting her wireless access and simultaneously rerouting via the public one in the Starbucks across the street (untraceable, after knocking out the security camera), cause that’s totally what he would be doing.

But Eliot’s eyes are closed, now.

Or they could be shouting instructions: cover your head, we’re detonating, last ditch. No choice. We’re sorry.

But Eliot’s not awake enough to hear it, or to grab his thigh again in that totally inappropriate way to warn him.

They could be yelling delight, loud as they dare. Scrambling through the grit and concrete, feet away, inches. The rescue, so close.

But there’s nothing. Just the two of them, and darkness. Silence. Stretchy and black.

His phone dies. _Genevieve_. His sweet, wonderful, impressive-battery-life Genevieve. She picked up signal off that rooftop in Detroit and let him snag those blueprints off the crappy company ethernet before Parker even sniffed that safe. Her GPS led them right to him, that time with the Ukrainians and the balalaika. She was a good phone. He mourns, just a little.

He holds Eliot’s hand, just a little. Eliot’s fingers feel stiff and broad and rough.

Eliot’s going to be mad as hell when he finds out he died holding some dude’s hand, Hardison thinks, and then he thinks crazily that maybe he wouldn’t be, not really, except that he’ll be dead so it won’t matter. Then he thinks that maybe, maybe, he should face up to how it’s not just Eliot that’s going to die in here; maybe he ought to figure out some message he wants to leave behind; only Genevieve is dead already and that was his chance, that was it and it’s gone, cause he didn’t want to give up before he had to. And then there’s a crack of light over his head, bright and sharp and bouncing itty bitty rocks off his forehead.

Eliot’s fingers clamp on his, and his eyes are open, staring, pissed at the grit that’s falling as his lips form a perfectly readable _What.The.Fuck_?

Hardison squints upwards.

 _They’ll be the cavalry_.

Hardison’s not sure, but from the disgusted blind glare and the taste of brickdust, he guesses he might have said that out loud – maybe with an accent? a twangy, drawly, Batman-low accent? maybe? – and he can’t hear but he can feel it, warm in his chest; laughter, and hope.

 

*

 

Eliot likes the part where the old man nearly kills a caveman with a rock, but they just barely make it to the end of the serial.

Hardison’s going to try _BSG_ (the remake, not the original: he’s not _insane_ ) next.  They’re going to discuss Gaius’s hair, and gradually Hardison will introduce Eliot to the George Lucas Theory of Hairy vs. Evil.

It’s going to be awesome.

 


End file.
